Violence is the last refuge of incompetence

I am a decorated veteran of the gulf war; which means that I sat in an air
conditioned space aboard a ship and repaired the electronic systems on a
helicopter. My bird had a really good radar and that radar was used to guide
other smaller helo's that fired wire guided missiles at their targets. The
wire guided missiles actually had a long wire that spooled out after the
missiles as it flew through the air and connected a video camera in the nose
of the missile to a monitor (and a video recorder) in the helicopter. The
bombardier used a joy stick to send singles down that wire to the missile's
fins and he or she would guide the missile to the target like a virtual kamikaze.
The video recorder was capture all this and then switch back to a camera
in the helo after the one in the missile was destroyed. We were able to watch
some of these tapes when the aircraft returned.

We could see the target approach and then watch from the distance as the
target exploded. Tanks and trucks would make small explosions, ammo dumps
and fuel depots would make huge "secondary" explosions. In one of those tapes,
there was a teeter-totter clearly visible in the right corner of the picture,
going up and down as the missile approached. The secondary explosion indicated
that an ammo dump had been placed next to a school.

I've learned how incompetent we are at finding good solutions for problems.
Even when we have no idea that the result could be horrible, we stick our
pudgy fingers in and muck around with things we don't begin to understand
just to try and make it come out the way we want, they way we think it should
be. Missionaries go to the far ends of the earth and vaccinate children without
any idea that overpopulation will result in a famine that will kill off the
next generation. Reality is that which, even when you don't believe it, remains.
In the end, we are left with the reality. In Viet Nam, some of the more friendly
villagers were given the favor of vaccination for their children by the US
Medic's. When the North Vietnamese realized this, they started looking for
the villages where the children had the vaccination scar and they would destroy
the village to make an example of those who cooperated with the enemy. In
the remaining villages, the parents chopped off the arm of their children
to save their lives.

You see, the American people would not take the bus, in fact they just HAD
to drive 10MPG SUV's. And the Scientists had all kinds of ideas for other
power sources for cars, but they and the engineers couldn't find a way to
make them as safe or inexpensive as gasoline. And the Politicians knew they
wouldn't get elected next year if we had a gas shortage like in the '70's
so when they heard that Sadam Hussein was going to invade Kuwaiti, they were
very worried and they couldn't think of anything else to do but send the
diplomats and they tried to convince him that this invasion would be a really
bad idea, but he said "We are a poor country and we need that oil for our
programs to educate and build for our people. The Kuwaities were drilling
sideways over the boarder and stealing it" and the President said, "We must
stop Iraq from invading Kuwait" but the generals said "But sir, he has placed
all his ammunition and fuel right next to the baby formula factories and
the churches and the schools." And the generals and the president and the
diplomats and the politicians and the engineers and scientists and the American
people all threw up there hands and said "We give up. We can't find a good
solution to the problem" Then they all pointed there fingers at me and said
"Mr 18yo W. Guninhand, you are our last hope, you must go and KILL THOSE
CHILDREN"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8rbHwMXMT8
"They make it attractive." but "That organization does not exist to give you money for school. That organization exists to assert the political will of the United States government against other people by force of arms."
"They're not sending you out there to be a hero; they are sending you out there to be a bully."
"... I had to do a lot of things that I just wish I didn't have in my head right now."+

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/malcolm_gladwell.html
"But do you know what the crucial thing is? In that exact same period that we've been using these drones with devastating accuracy, the number of attacks, of suicide attacks and terrorist attacks, against American forces in Afghanistan has increased tenfold. As we have gotten more and more efficient in killing them, they have become angrier and angrier and more and more motivated to kill us. I have not described to you a success story. I've described to you the opposite of a success story."+

<A HREF="http://www.massmind.org/techref/other/incompetence.htm"> Violence is the last refuge of incompetence</A>

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